


Unmissed

by 221b_hound



Series: Unkissed [20]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Insecure Sherlock, M/M, Pet Names, Sherlock Holmes and Bees, Sherlock is a numpty, Sherlock worries John only loves him for the adrenalin, planning retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 05:51:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1767862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John enjoys a good brawl during a case, and Sherlock begins to worry - when they retire, will John get bored? Will John get bored and leave. But even if John isn't a genius about cases, he knows a thing or two about Sherlock's panic attacks about them as a couple. With only four days till the wedding, he's not about to let Sherlock continue with this misplaced notion that John will be bored in retirement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unmissed

**Author's Note:**

> I've played with elements of The Solitary Cyclist for the case-in-passing at the start of this story.

The case had begun slowly enough: eight days before the wedding, an awkward phone call came from an even more awkward client wanting advice on a teaching position she’d been offered. She changed her mind half way through the call and hung up without identifying herself and caused Sherlock to rant for fifteen minutes about being so bereft of interesting cases he might as well become a careers guidance service to the inarticulate.

An odd email arrived in Sherlock’s rather than John’s inbox the next morning, saying she was leaving to take up the role but would feel better if someone knew where she’d gone. It was nominally even less informative than the phone call, but Sherlock had deduced many things from it, including the facts that Ms Violet Smith was without family, in difficult financial straits, had a classical education in music, mathematics, Latin and Greek, suffered terrible social anxiety, had taken up an improbably lucratively paid tutoring position at a small private school outside metropolitan London, and was very probably in grave danger.

Especially as the school administration denied ever having offered the position to the young woman, who had gone missing from her home.

The next three days had been hectic, sending John and Sherlock to separate locales in search of their client, and on more than one wild goose chase, before Violet was found, being held against her will by the men who were vying, through a card game and then a fistfight, to both marry and despatch her for the inheritance she didn’t know she had.

A chase through the countryside, by car, motorbike, horseback and, honestly, a _gondola_ , had resulted in Ms Smith’s rescue, but not before leaving a trail of bodies. Carruthers, a vile piece of work, had shot the unfrocked priest who had no business solemnising a marriage in the first place, in a bitter argument over losing the card game. Then he had beaten the other abductor, Woodley, with the gondola pole before losing his footing and falling into the river. Woodley, just as vile and certainly no husband to Ms Smith in the eyes of the law whatever the dead ex-priest had tried to claim, had held Carruthers under the water till he’d drowned.

Woodley had caught up with Ms Smith just as Sherlock had arrived on horseback like an honest-to-god Wild West paperback hero. John drew up moments later on the motorbike he’d commandeered.

Woodley had tried to cut his losses and dispose of witnesses simultaneously, which meant that John intervened to defend Ms Smith, then Sherlock intervened to defend John, then John once more weighed in to protect Sherlock, and then Ms Smith found her gumption – because she was so unspeakably angry (and afraid, but anger won) – and had taken ferociously to Woodley with a loose fencepost.

Woodley required hospitalisation for a broken nose (Smith’s fencepost), a fractured cheek (John’s left fist) and concussion (Sherlock, using John’s helmet) before the whole thing was wrapped up, charges laid and the distressed Ms Smith sent home to plan how to spend the fortune her American aunt had left to her.

Once released from all the tedious paperwork, John and Sherlock took the train back to London. The afternoon was bright and warm, and Sherlock walked home from the station shoulder to shoulder with John, who was nursing bruised knuckles and a wicked grin, through the park.

John’s gait was _ebullient_ , Sherlock decided was the word for it. Also, perhaps, a touch _pugnacious_. Certainly _jaunty._ It should have been disturbing how much John liked the occasional brawl, except that Sherlock generally found them entertaining himself, and he loved it when John was cocky at the end of a case that had required both the soldier and the doctor in him.

John grinned at him, a definite spark in his eye, as they strode through the garden this warm afternoon. “You were brilliant,” he said, not for the first time, but Sherlock could see he was thinking of a particular incident, and wondered which it was, “I didn’t know you could ride a horse.”

“I didn’t know you could ride a motorbike.”

“Haven’t in ages. I used to muck about with them a bit on the base in Kandahar, but it’s not wise to go riding about Afghanistan without as much armour plating around you as possible. But _you._ ” John grinned again.

Sherlock shrugged. He hadn’t ridden much since his younger years, and it wasn’t his favourite activity. Horses were much less reliable than cars, what with having minds of their own, and it bemused him that John was so impressed by the feat.

“I used to have to go with Harry to the local pony club, because she was so desperate to learn how to ride,” John offered, “I fell off three times before mum let me just wait in the car and read.”

“You _fell off_?” said Sherlock slowly, wondering how it was possible to fall off a pony.

“Feet didn’t reach the stirrups properly,” said John, all seriousness, and Sherlock almost believed that someone had been that incompetent at the pony club.

“Ah,” Sherlock noted suddenly, “Harry bribed you to take the tumbles.”

John’s grin just got wider. “Bribed and threatened. I think she was sweet on the instructor. I wanted to ride the proper horses, not the piddly little pony, but they wouldn’t let me. They said eight was too young for the proper horses. I used to sneak off and talk to this thoroughbred horse the owners kept in a separate paddock. Haughty bugger. Beautiful though.” And John’s eyes twinkled again.

“Am I supposed to thank you for saying I have a face like a horse?”

“A very beautiful horse,” John said, unrepentant, “A thoroughbred. Not some barrel-shaped bloody pony. You, sweetpea, are all long legs and head-tossing, and I like your mane.” He reached up to tug playfully on a few of Sherlock’s curls, “And if you’re in the mood, when we get home I’ll give you a rub-down.”

From anyone else, this would have been a dreadful sexual innuendo, but Sherlock knew this promise of John’s well. Care and touch and attention, exactly as Sherlock preferred it. He took up John’s bruised hand in his. “I might be convinced to forgive you the comparison,” he said, as though reluctant.

John squeezed his hand and laughed, and for a little while they walked through the park, hand in hand.

“If you still want to learn to ride,” said Sherlock after a while, “It can be arranged.”

“I’m saving it up for retirement,” John replied, “For when you tend your bees.”

John hummed a song that Sherlock didn’t recognise, and Sherlock thought about that statement. John planning things to do for when Sherlock was busy with his stated intention of raising and writing about bees. John learning to ride and… what? What on earth would John do on a rural property, with a little cottage? For a man who thrived on excitement, learning how to ride some unpredictable horse wasn’t going to keep John occupied for long.

Sherlock was shocked to realise he’d never considered this aspect of their future before. In all honesty, for most of his life he’d assumed he’d be dead long before retirement became a possibility. Then came the Work, and then John’s friendship and partnership in detection, and it became slightly more possible he’d live that long. That there was a _reason_ to.

Now the friendship had become something infinitely more deep and rich; the Work was still a driving force but no longer the sole one. Sherlock had extrapolated his own life forward to a time when he would not be running madly around; when he’d devote his time and attention to his lifelong fascination for apiculture.

How had he not wondered what John would do with that time? John, the doctor who went to war because he needed to be active and challenged by more than medicine. John, who tended the injured but also launched gleefully into battle for a good cause and acquired a positive glow in the aftermath.

John, Sherlock suddenly realised, was going to shrivel up with boredom when they retired. He was going to become restless and unhappy and long for battles and danger. John would not thrive.

John would leave. He would get bored and leave. John would grow bored of life among the bees and _leave._

“Whatever you’re thinking,” John’s voice broke suddenly into Sherlock’s incipient panic, “Stop it.”

“I’m not…”

“You are. You’re panicking about something.” John stopped and regarded Sherlock narrowly. “Something about us.”

“I…”

“You can keep a lot of things secret, Sherlock. Anything about cases or clients. But not this. I always know when you’re getting panicked about us, even when I don’t know what’s causing it.”

And it was true. Sherlock wasn’t sure what the tells were, and he was certain John couldn’t name them either, but John always knew.

“Retirement,” he said, blurting it out after the tense pause, “You’ll be bored. You’ll be bored and you’ll…”

“No. Nope. Stop right there.”

“John, you are not a man who will happily sit in a country cottage and grow _marrows_.”

John stared at him. Blinked. “Marrows?”

“Don’t be deliberately obtuse.”

“All right. I won’t be. I don’t plan to grow marrows in my retirement. Other things, but not marrows. I’m not fond of them, as a rule.”

“ _John_.”

“Sherlock.”

“This isn’t funny,” snapped Sherlock, “You were drawn to me because of the promise of action, a life of excitement. The _adrenalin_. You…” Sherlock faltered and began to draw away. When he could no longer offer John that life, would John even still love him? Would he…?

“No. No no no. Sweetheart. Honeybee. Stop that thought, whatever it is, and come right back here. Look at me. _Look_.” John had seized both Sherlock’s hands and tugged him close. His blue eyes were fiercely bright as he stared into Sherlock’s own pale ones. Then his eyebrows rose up in surprise at the distress he saw there. “You think that’s it, don’t you? How can you possibly think that’s all this is? How can you possibly think I’d…?”

Then, all at once, the rising ire banked again, and John shook his head. “Oh, Sherlock. Sherlock, we’re getting married in four days and you still don’t get it?”

“Get what?” snapped Sherlock irritably, and he only scowled harder at John’s odd expression. Tenderness and concern and compassion.

“I have no idea how, for a genius, you keep missing things. Not about me. About you. You keep thinking you’re not enough on your own. You… look, come here. Sit down.”

John tugged him over to a tree and reluctantly, Sherlock followed John’s lead to sit down. Bees and insects buzzed lazily about the nearby flower beds and occasionally ventured into the dappled shade. Sherlock sat tensely with his back to the tree. John sat in front of him, not taking his hands, but watching him with a steady, intense regard.

“When you were dead,” John grimaced, then continued, “When I thought you were dead. Do you know what I missed?”

Sherlock huffed and didn’t answer.

“You think it was running around London. Catching killers and throwing idiots into the river and all those things. You think I missed cases.”

“You like cases,” Sherlock muttered.

“Yes, but that’s not what I missed. Even after the first days you were gone, when it was all just too raw, it was never the cases I missed. Months and months had passed, and I still couldn’t go back to Baker Street. I couldn’t bear it. That wasn’t about the Work. It was you. Just you.”

Sherlock blinked at him.

“I missed _you_. I missed your voice. I missed hearing you moving around, muttering and talking to yourself, and to me even if I only came in half way through the conversation you were apparently having with me. I missed the way you tortured your violin. I missed knowing you were just a few steps away, and it was absolutely unbearable in the flat. Everything was so quiet, and so still, and so _wrong_. We’d always had plenty of days without cases, but those days had never been _still_. Even when you were contemplating the ceiling from the sofa in nothing but a sheet, you weren’t ever really _still_. I could _see_ you thinking. I could see in _here_ ,” John pressed a forefinger lightly to Sherlock’s forehead, “You were so, so busy. So active. So charged up and _exciting_.”

John took Sherlock’s hands in his again at last. “I didn’t miss anything else, when you were gone. I just missed you. Like a missing limb. Like… like a heartbeat that had stopped. You are amazing. Even sitting still. Even being a monumental pain in the arse. You crack the world open, with the way you think, the way you look at things. Being with you was always the most extraordinary experience. You changed the way I lived in the world. I can’t do what you do, but the way you do it, the way you can pull apart every tiny thing, and put it back together and just know what’s going on, in plain sight, even though I can’t see it.”

John took a steadying breath, because his voice had begun to thicken with emotion. “And the way you move, even when you’re hardly moving. So much grace. So much energy. You are beautiful to watch. I used to watch you, you know. Before I had the faintest idea we could be anything more than friends. Before I even knew I wanted that. You were, and you are, simply captivating. So purposeful one moment, so extravagant the next. Precise like a dancer and then suddenly a big bloody child, and I absolutely couldn’t take my eyes off you some days. I even liked to watch you working at your microscope. And playing the violin. God, your hands. The smallest movements you make are dynamic.”

He leaned forward now, to cup Sherlock’s cheek in one hand. “I don’t know how you miss these things about yourself. You are amazing. Brilliant. _In and of yourself_. You have this idea that you’re so hard to love, and you’re not. You’re really not. Your mind is extraordinary, but not more extraordinary than your heart. I don’t need the Work for me to be stimulated. I didn’t miss the _work_ when you were dead. I missed _you_ , and watching you just be yourself. I missed the excitement of just _being with you_ , and seeing the world the way you see it. I missed you. I missed you so much. Not the work. You. _You_.”

Both of John’s hands were cupping Sherlock’s face now – Sherlock with his eyes wide open in shock and amazement and hope. “I want to grow old with you, Sherlock. I want to see your grace and your tantrums and the look on your face when you discover something new, something to share with slow old me. I might learn to ride a horse, or that motorbike I’ve wanted since I was nine. I’m definitely going to write our memoirs, even though you’re going to be rude about it and criticise my vocabulary, my grammar and my writing style; I’m going to grow vegetables, and flowers for your bees. I’m going to bake scones to eat with the honey you get from the bees, and cook with produce from my garden, and turn us into fat, happy old men. And you’ll be there, doing things you love, being extraordinary by being yourself. And that’s enough. You will always be enough. Please get that into your thick skull. I love you, and you’re not merely enough. You are… a _banquet_. An embarrassment of riches. You’re extraordinary, and I would give up all the brawling and chases tomorrow if you wanted to go raise bees instead. I would go with you anywhere. You are all the excitement I crave. You are everything I want. You numpty.”

John’s face had scrunched up with emotion, and so he pressed his lips to Sherlock’s forehead, and then his mouth, only to fall into Sherlock’s embrace as Sherlock wound arms around his shoulders and pulled him close.

“You’re not slow,” Sherlock said at last, when they stopped kissing for a moment, and then amended it to, “Not as slow as the rest of them.”

John laughed. “I don’t mind. I thought for five minutes about having a panic attack that you’d get bored with me one day…”

“Never.”

“Well, I figured since you were the one who proposed, you’d decided that wasn’t going to happen, so I decided to trust you on that. So trust me on this. You are all the excitement I need. The work is great and we both love it, but when it’s time to opt for bees and badly written memoirs, I’m looking forward to that, too. As long as it’s you and me, together.”

Sherlock clutched John close to him, burying his face in John’s neck, as he did when they were in public and he was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. He hid the rawness of it, the extraordinary joy of it, against John’s skin, so that John would know, but no-one else.

And John did. John was practically in his lap now, arms wrapped tightly around Sherlock’s shoulders, and he was nuzzling Sherlock’s hair.

“Do you believe me?” he murmured.

“Yes.” Sherlock held him more tightly.

Carefully, John shifted and, fingers against Sherlock’s chin, he tilted his fiancé’s face up to look into his eyes. “Sweetpea,” he said, “Honeybee.”

“I can’t be the bee _and_ the flower,” Sherlock protested, but only half-heartedly.

“You are, though. My blossom. Honeybumble. My sunny sunshine, too. Sugarsnap. Firefly. Little bird. Petal. Noodle.”

“Noodle?”

“Yes.” John laughed, “And hugglebear. Kitten.”

“You forgot ‘horseface’,” but Sherlock was laughing too now.

“My thoroughbred,” John kissed Sherlock’s nose, “My coltish genius. You are extraordinary. And I’m never giving you up.”

Sherlock sighed, content, and pressed his face to John’s throat. “Fluffbundle.”

John giggled. “The bathing offer stands,” he said.

“Can you actually make scones?”  Sherlock asked.

“I have no idea. I’m prepared to learn, though.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock bumped his nose into the soft point under John’s ear. “Bathing would be good.”

“Are you making disparaging reference to my manly post-brawl scent?”

“Sweat and engine oil become you,” Sherlock allowed, “I’m not sure about me and the smell of the stable.”

“You’ve smelled worse,” John assured him.

“Hardly a recommendation,” said Sherlock, “I’ve walked through sewers before.”

“Never a dull moment,” John agreed, “Let’s go home, then, Dobbin.”

“You have ceased to be funny.”

“That’s where you’re mistaken,” said John, and he gave Sherlock a final kiss before finally getting to his feet and offering his hand. “Come on. You can tell me about the park bees on the way.”

Sherlock took John’s hand and levered himself up, and hand in hand they completed the walk back to the flat, while Sherlock told John about the flower beds favoured by the Regent’s Park bees and the influence various plants had on the taste of honey – and marvelled in the notion that despite all he’d thought he’d known about himself, and all the times he had been found inadequate (as son, brother, friend, lover) he really was, for John, not merely _enough_ … but a _banquet._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Unmissed [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7519735) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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